Toddlers and Tiaras Teaches Little Girls Appearance is Everything

I wrote a post about what is wrong with tv these days and I was thinking about what shows like Toddlers and Tiaras and Little Miss Perfect teach little girls. Ok I don't think Little Miss Perfect is on any more.  I know these are not kids shows but there are still commercials for them and they appear on talk shows and they sometimes cover it on the news. I am concerned with child beauty pageants anyways. I am sure some people will argue that it teaches self esteem and blah blah blah. There are more healthy ways to teach self esteem. There are better ways to feel good about your self. Beauty pageants focus on outer beauty and they are forced to wear gobs and gobs of makeup and wear fake teeth called flippers. They are many times the little girls are dressed in skimpy little outfits that I would never wear as a grown woman. They look fake. 

 They are taught to be fake little puppets that are are taught that the most important thing in the world is to be beautiful and to have the prettiest face. What is wrong with letting kids be kids? Why not teach them that they are beautiful without the makeup and the false teeth and spray tans. Beauty comes from within. It doesn't matter what you look like as long as you are kind and have a good heart.  Beauty isn't putting on clown makeup and being told by judges that you are the most beautiful. You don't need someone judging you on your appearance. How you feel about yourself is what is important. The parents need to stop brainwashing their children but subjecting their little ones to judgement and paying for them to be judged. It's almost as if they are trying to prove to themselves that their child is good enough. Every child and person is good enough, and no one should have to tell you that. If you don't believe it, it doesn't matter how many pageants you have won or how many times you are told a day you have to believe it. 

 Loving yourself is the most important thing.

Crocodiles, Stingrays and Pythons OH MY!

I always have a hard time picking out gifts for some of my family and friends.  I don’t always have a lot of time to scout out the perfect gifts at a store, so I turn to online shopping. You can find anything online.  I am definitely not the most fashionable person in the world.  It has become difficult to know what is trendy or what someone would like. Most of my wardrobe is jeans and t-shirts.  I also wear a lot of pajamas. I work from home so I can get away with it.  Not all my friends share in my extremely comfortable wardrobe.  I have a friend who loves purses. She has a huge collection. I have had two purses in 10 years.  She also loves wallets; I have had my Strawberry Shortcake wallet for 8 years.  It’s still in great condition too.  My friend prefers exotic purses and wallets made out of different leathers.  I found a website that sells crocodile purses and wallets. They even have stingray ones too.  I don’t know how Noah would really feel about that one.  I thought it was interesting to see that they have lizard leather items too.  I wouldn’t really mind if they took snakes to make things out of. I just don’t want either around me. I am deathly afraid of snakes, dead or alive. They also have cow leather. It’s really pretty stuff.

Do you like exotic purses and wallets?

My Cousin Alex

As some of you may know, I have family in England. My dad lives there and so do my aunt and cousin. I haven't seen my cousin Alex in many years which sucks because we used to be really close before they moved to England. The last time I saw him he  was not an adult yet. He used to talk about wanting to drink beer, of course he wasn't allowed to. I wonder how he is doing? Some day I want to make the trip across the pond and see my family. It would be so cool to be in a new country and experience all the culture. I would probably call up my cousin Alex and meet up with him and go to some london bars and have a drink to catch up and talk about old times. I wonder how bars in London differ from American bars? I am sure there are some slight differences. I believe the drinking age is younger than in the United States. I think it would be odd to see younger adults in a bar drinking when I am so used to the drinking age being twenty one. It was kind of like when I first saw a child in a liquor store in Florida. In Indiana you have to be twenty one to even enter one. It's funny how you get used to things, it would be culture shock.

I would love to see Alex though. There is something about family that only family members can understand. We would probably laugh so hard together and remember all the crazy things we used to do. We used to play with his neighbors and make our own mad libs. We also would have tea parties with lots of yummy treats.  We had some great times together and I miss him a lot. I wonder if he has a British accent now. I am very curious to see how he's grown up. I know it won't be the same as when we were kids, we both have probably changed a lot as we have gotten older. I hope that we are still able to be close and not two strangers that happen to share the same grandparents.

Have you ever been to London? Do you have any bar recommendations?